Face your Fears

Fear. Most of us are completely scared out of our minds of one thing or another. Some fear snakes, others fear death. Rational fears, clinical phobias, bumps in the night. Everyone is afraid of something. No matter who you are, how big you are, how much money you have in the bank, how much of a bad-ass you think you are: you are not without fear. Primal fears as old as time. Very few of us get to face that which we fear and through it become a better person through just knowing you conquered something you’ve been scared of for years. This is one such story.

For most of my 2006-2007 ‘teetotaler stage’ I was called on to be a designated driver /freelance drunk wrangler by a female friend of mine(hereby referred to as “Dee”) on a semi-regular basis. My cover charge, if there was one, would be paid. If a drive-thru run was requested, my food was paid for by the little lady next to me. As a very special bonus I would be able to drink all the Coke I could stomach that evening. All this for providing the peace of mind that is ‘Someone sober who won’t try to touch my vagina while I’m passing out is taking me back to my house tonight’.

From time to time Dee would call me for designated duties and to keep her from making an ass out of herself at the local bars and pubs. My nightly duties included picking her up, taking her to the ATM to get drinking cash, escorting her into the bars, keeping her tits in her shirt and other general drunk wrangling duties. On nights when she was hit on by the incredibly creepy, the sketchy and/or the married persons in various states of inebriation I would be forced to call upon my acting skills and pretend to be her boyfriend. “Holy shit, that drunk guy I went to High School with won’t leave me alone!” she’d whisper in my ear as I got a sloppy drunk arm wrapped around my arm. Other times I was just asked to keep her from going home with anyone. Such is the life of a hired gun, I suppose.

So one night I get a call asking me if I wanted to meet her at Floyd’s. Not having much else to do, and knowing I was going to be on midnights the next week, I agreed. So we go and have a good time, playing pool and talking to random bar-trash and she’s pretty much wasted by like 11 p.m. During our discussions with the randoms a guy named Bruce came up to us and introduced himself. He said he was new in town, and thought that going to the local watering hole was the best plan of action to meet new and exciting people. He kept buying our little group round after round, and was somewhat upset that I was not partaking in his generosity. “New guy Bruce - I don’t drink anymore. Thank you for the thought though.” was my often repeated response. And he kept buying and buying and offering me something. After about 2 hours I decided to take him up on his offer, and take a Coca-cola. Providing the bar didn’t have coke, I’d take a Dr. Pepper. So he comes back with a pair of pitchers and a glass of brown liquid for me. I sipped it and it tasted….off. “New guy Bruce got me a fucking Pepsi!” I thought to myself. It starts to get late and I’m drinking my bad tasting drink and talking to people and all of a sudden I start to get a rumble in my belly.

Not a “Oh man, I shouldn’t have had fifteen tacos” type of pain. Like a “something BAD is going to happen” kind of pain. I run into the restroom and find it unusable. It looks like the toilet in “Trainspotting”. All seeping of filth and disgusting. “Fuck this, I’m heading home. “ I thought to myself. So I said my goodbyes , got a sly grin from Bruce and went to my car. About halfway across the parking lot more discomfort and warning. I briefly considered shitting in the dumpster. No joke, I thought ‘Well, no one will see me in this back alley dumpster, I can poop in peace!” The voice of reason kicked in and said that was a horrible plan – just get somewhere with a toilet. Right fucking now.

I get in my car and take off towards the nearest public restroom. The other bar across the street was no better in the sanitation department. McDonald’s was closed. The supermarket was closed. BP had no public restroom. All the safe and clean public restrooms were closed for the evening. “It’s about 5 miles to my house. I think I can make it” was my last thought before gunning it north on 44. That and “I hope I don’t shit my pants in my car.”

A few minutes into my impossible voyage someone pulls out in front of me. And decided to go 35 miles per hour for the next few miles. My vision went red. The Boss music from Super Mario Bros. 2 started playing in my head. A small digital clock appeared in my lower left field of vision. It was a countdown. A countdown to my one of my greatest fears.

I hit the gas as the countdown approached 1:30 and passed the derelict grandmother. 3 miles to go. “I can do this” I thought as my teeth started to grind and the music got louder and faster. My car followed suit. Soon it was 70, 80, 90 miles per hour. My stomach was quivering and my leg muscles were starting to twitch. Tears started running down my face.

My street was a block ahead. I had made it. The timer clicked down to 0:03 when I slid into my side yard. I jumped out of my car without shutting anything off. I just jumped. Or teleported or flew. I’m not sure if I could have used my leg muscles at that point without ruining everything and staring my own personal demons in the face. I get about 2 steps through the yard to the house as the timer reaches 0:00. “I’m not going to make it” I said aloud as I ripped off my pants. Yep, took them off right over the Chuck’s. and threw them safely out of the blast zone.

I leaned my back against the mailbox post as I cried and made my shame in the yard. Traffic passed as I squatted in my side yard and vomited out my ass in the glare of my own headlights. “I haven’t eaten anything spicy or worthy of this….vile evil! This chocolate shotgun isn’t a thing of my own doing!” was my only thought. The sly grin. scenes from ‘Wedding Crashers” and “Dumb and Dumber” popped into my mind. “I got drugged” was the only thing that I could see as I waddled to see if the garden hose was still hooked up.

Since the night I faced the fear of shitting my pants as an adult I came to a conclusion: overcoming the thing you fear the most makes you a better person. The next meal you eat is the best meal on Earth. You sleep better. You feel more alive. The sun shines brighter and the air is cleaner. Nothing gets to you for you are aware of who and what you are. Complete and total Zen.

Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids

Heart,

The Doctor

The Oregon: Year One - Racist Bob

With yesterday being the seventh anniversary of Day One at The Oregon, I thought I would wax nostalgic about that day. This is how the mighty saga began. It is what shaped us from just a bunch of random guys living together into the crazy bunch of idiots on The Louisville Police Departments “Dangerous if they weren’t such lazy jerks” list. This is Genesis of The Book of Oregon. Or Batman Begins. Whichever you prefer.

It was the first Friday in March, 2001. I had worked until 2 a.m. the night before at the factory and went home to get a good nights rest. Moving day was here. I was excited to be on my own, making my own decisions. If pudding was what I felt like having for dinner, pudding would be my entrée. So I wake up at around 11 and get showered and dressed. Then I load my car with all the stuff that I wouldn’t need the strength and Viking-like brawn of the Warner boys and make the drive across town to The Oregon.

So I go over there to wait for the cable guy to show up. My mother was already there because the cable company gave me an 8-4 window for my appointment. Yep, 8 fucking hours. That’s what they consider a ‘window’. And since the bank wouldn’t give up the keys until Friday morning, there was no sleeping there hobo style on a pile of shit from my backseat and waiting for Duder McDudeface to show up and hook the Sci-Fi network and Comedy Central into the magic picture box and make the shakes go away. So I had to have my mother as a proxy sitting there reading since eight in the morning, waiting for me to get my sleepy ass over there and start moving shit.

I get there at around 11:30, prop the back door open and start to move shit in. About seven or eight items into my towels and cookery load this tubby old guy knocks on the back door. He’s got long scraggly grayish hair. And mutton chops. Like Chester A. Arthur. Mother fucker was a “good ole’ boy” from the looks of him. He introduces himself as Bob, the guy who lived in the house behind this one. He just wanted to make sure we were people actually moving in, and not breaking in to smash up the place. We were there to do both, actually. What we later realized was that he wasn’t checking to see if we were moving in, he was checking to see if we were of the Caucasian persuasion.

Racist Bob was what we later knew him by. From that first day when he introduced himself and then went on to tell us he was glad it was just a bunch of 20 something boys and not “fags, spicks or niggers” moving into his neighborhood and making the place racially impure. My mother and I just looked at him in amazement and said “Nice to meet you Bob.” He then went into a monologue about minorities. About how we, as white people, were better than “they” were. Then he went on to explain who “they” were. He started rambling off racial slurs like he was writing a book. A book if words for ethnic groups I didn’t even know about. I even threw in a few that didn’t even really make sense or, to the best of my knowledge, exist. “Yeah Bob; be glad we aren’t a bunch of Donkey Kong’s moving in to scum up the town!” “Goddamn right!” he replied. My mother looked at me as if to say “Honey, don’t tease the racists. They usually own guns.”

That was how we came to know Racist Bob. Racist as he was, he really had no problems with any of our shenanigans. Set up a slip and slide in the rain and slide into his yard? Not a problem. “Boy’s will be boy’s” he’d shout at us. Then he’d shout at his wife to finish mowing the yard before the rain came down any harder. He’d ambush us on the way to Dairy Mart and tell us long boring stories that went nowhere. A trip that would have taken 5 minutes could take as long as an hour if Racist Bob was out drinking beer in the yard. If he caught you on the way back? You officially had an eleven pack of frosty longneck bottles to bring back to the house.

We’d sit on the back porch on warmer days and watch him and his wife argue. See, one of them would always be mowing the yard. And the other one wouldn’t like how they were doing it. So there would be yelling, and someone would get shoved from behind the mower. Then the yeller would take over for about 10 or so minutes. The cycle would go on until the yard was finished. You could hear them yell from our front room. So you’d grab something cold from the fridge and sit on the steps and watch Domestic Violence become a very real possibility. Occasionally one of us would yell “She missed a spot, Bob!” and watch him start yelling as he shot us a glimpse of his Confederate flag shirt as he waved us a “Thanks, boys!” wave and shot both of his six-guns into the air with reckless abandon. Racist Bob, you were our entertainment on hot sunny days.

When everyone on the block got together and signed a petition to get us kicked out, who had our backs? That’s right. Racist Bob. Seems in his misspent youth he and a bunch of his buddies rented an old farm house and got drunk and rowdy on a pretty regular basis. Finding someone drunkenly swimming in his pool at 4 a.m. naked was a bit of nostalgia for the old bigot. He threw all his stars and bars mega-power behind his convictions and gave a very passionate speech at City Hall, and convinced the Mayor HIMSELF to let us stay. Ok, that very last part never really happened. But I guarantee you pictured it. And most of you giggled. For real though, he talked a lot of the people down since we never really bothered him. He even came over once to warn us that a guy down the road had turned us in for lighting off fireworks one afternoon. Plus he knew he could hit us up for a beer from time to time. As long as no one in the building had too much of a tan.

Thanks for reading, but that’s it for now, kids

Dr. R.